Lenny might be late

Debian project leader Steve McIntyre has dismissed claims that the next stable version of Debian – codename Lenny – could be delayed until June 2009. Based on the number of outstanding release-critical bugs and the time it has taken to fix them on previous releases, Debian developer Bastian Venthur estimated it will take a further eight or nine months to bring Lenny up to release quality.

Originally scheduled for release in September, McIntyre said last month that he expected to release Lenny by the end of October and quashed speculation about further delays this week.

"Bastian's being a little bit pessimistic based on the data he's looking at, but as far as I know, he hasn't spoken to any of the release team. As far as Lenny goes, we're 'almost' there," he told The Register.

He went on to say that there were three main tasks to complete before Lenny can be released. Firstly, the team needs to create a release candidate build of the installer which McIntyre said is a couple of weeks late but "due very shortly."

The team also needs to deal with what McIntyre calls "the usual stack of release-critical bugs that we want to fix before the release" and complete "final work on the release notes, including guidelines on how best to upgrade from previous releases and known issues with workarounds."

"We're working through the remaining RC bugs as fast as we can, and there's scope for dropping some packages from Lenny before the release if we need to. As for exact timing, I can't promise anything. I'd love to see Lenny out before the end of the month, but we'll have to see," McIntyre said. ®